The spindle drive in question can be used for all possible adjusting elements of a motor vehicle. Examples of this are a tailgate, a trunk lid, a door, in particular a side door, an engine hood or the like of a motor vehicle.
The known spindle drive (DE 20 2006 014 694 U1), on which the invention is based, is equipped with a rotary drive motor, a speed reduction gear mechanism arranged downstream of the drive motor and a spindle/spindle nut gear mechanism arranged downstream of the speed reduction gear mechanism. All of these components are accommodated one behind the other in an elongate, telescopic drive housing and are aligned with a common longitudinal drive axis.
The speed reduction gear mechanism of the known spindle drive comprises two planetary gear mechanism stages, which respectively have the usual components of a sun gear, planet-gear carrier with planet gears and a ring gear.
While the known spindle drive has a high degree of compactness with respect to the longitudinal drive axis in the radial extent, there are still possibilities for optimizing the achievable compactness in the extent along the longitudinal drive axis.
The invention addresses the problem of designing and developing the known spindle drive in such a way that the necessary installation space in the direction of the longitudinal drive axis is reduced.